M. Virlet had attributed to flies the eggs of which we have been -speaking. But in 185 1 M. Guerin-Meneville having received, transmitted to him by M. Ghiliani, eggs of which haiitle is made, and some of the insects said to produce them, stated that the latter belonged to two different species. The one had been known a long time since under the name of Corixa mercenaria; M. Guerin- Meneville called the other Corixa feinorata.

The same entomologist discovered, among the eggs of these two species, other eggs of a more considerable size, which he attributed to a new species of the genus Notonecla, about which we are now going to say a few words. The Notoneda glauca, which Geoffroy calls the Large Bug with Oars (" Grande punaise a avirons "), is very common in ditches, reservoirs, and stagnant waters. Its body is oblong, narrow, contracted posteriorly, convex above, flat below, having, at its sides and its extremities, hairs which, when spread out, support the animal on the water. Its head is large and of a slightly greenish grey, and has on each of its sides a very large eye of a pale brown colour. Its thorax is greyish, the hemelytra of a greenish grey, the membranous wings white. Of its legs, the front four are short; but the hind legs, Almost twice as long, are furnished with long hairs, and resemble oars. It is with the aid of these that the animal moves through the water; and it does so in a singular manner, placing itself on its back, and generally in an inclined position, as in Fig. 77. ^Vhen this insect, on the contrary, drags itself along on the mud,

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the front legs are those which it employs, the hind legs being idle, and merely drawn along behind it. It is generally towards the evening or during the night that it comes out of the water, to walk and to fly, if it wishes to pass from one marsh to another.

This bloodthirsty insect lives entirely by rapine; it is one of the most carnivorous of insects.

^^^ Those which it attacks die very soon after they have been hurt by it. De Geer thinks that the water bug drops into the wound a poisonous humour. It seizes upon insects much bigger, and apparently much stronger, than itself, and does not spare its own species.

Fig. 77.— Notonecta giauca. The instnuiient with which the Notonecta attacks its prey is composed of a very strong and very long conical beak, formed of four joints. The sucker is composed of an upper piece, short and pointed, and of four fine pointed hairs.

The female of the Notonecta giauca lays a great number of eggs, white, and of elongated shape, which it deposits on the stems and leaves of aquatic plants. The eggs are hatched at the beginning of spring, or in May, and the young ones at once begin to swim about like their mother, on their backs, belly upwards. M. Leon Dufour says on this subject: — *' A dorsal region, raised like a donkey's back, or like the rounded keel of a boat, and covered with a velvety substance, which renders it impermeable, numerous fine fringes which garnish either the hind legs, or the borders of the abdomen and thorax, or lastly in a double row form a crest or comb running down the surface of the belly, and which spread themselves out or fold themselves in at the will of the insect, just like fins, favour both this supine attitude and the accuracy of the swimming movements of the Notonecta. Since Nature — which seems often to delight in producing extraordinary exceptions to her ordinary rules, thus bearing witness to the immensity of her resources-had condemned this animal to pass its life in an inverted position, it was necessary, for the maintenance of its existence, that it should provide it with an organisation in harmony with this attitude. It is also for this object that its head is bent over its chest; that its eyes, of an oval shape, can see below from above; that the front as well as the middle legs, agile and curved, solely destined for prehension, car

HEMIPTERA, TOr

to a certain extent become unbent by means of the elongated haunches which fix them to the body, and clutch firm hold of their prey with the strong claws which terminate the tarsi."

HOMOPTERA.

We come now to the second group of the order Hemiptera,' ; namely, Homoptera. The insects which compose this division are numerous. They may be arranged into three great families, of the most remarkable members of which we shall give some account. These are the Ckadce, the Aphides or Plant Lice, and the Coccidce.

The Cicada is the type of the first of these families. It has a deafening and monotonous song; as Bilboquet says, in the " Saltim-banques," "those who like that note have enough of it for their money." Virgil pronounced a just criticism on the song of the. Cicada: he saw in it nothing better than a hoarse and disagreeable sound.

''At mecum raucis, tua dum vestigia lustro, • Sole sub ardenti resonant arlDusta cicadis,"

says the Latin poet in his " Eclogues," and repeats the same opinion in a verse in his " Georgics: " —

** Et cantu querulce vumpent arbusta cicadoe."

The song of the Cicada, so sharp, so discordant, was, however, the delight of the Greeks.

Listen to Plato in the first lines of " Phaedo ": " By Here," cries the philosopher-poet, " what a charming place for repose!.... It might well be consecrated to some nymphs and to the river Achelous, to judge by these figures and statues. Taste a little the good air one breathes. How charming, how sweet! One hears as a summer noise an harmonious murmur accompanying the chorus of the Cicada." The Greeks, then, had quite a peculiar taste for the song of the Cicada. They liked to hear its screeching notes, sharp as a point of steel. To enjoy it quite at their ease they shut them up in open wicker-work cages, pretty much in the same way as children shut up the cricket, so as to hear its joyous cri-crt. They carried their love for this insect with the screaming voice so far as to make it Ihe, symbol of music. We see, in drawings emblematical of the musical, art, a Cicada resting on strings of a cythera. A Grecian legend

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relates that one day two cythera players, Eunomos and Aristo, con-- tending on this sonorous instrument, one of the strings of the former's cythera having broken, a Cicada settled on it, and sang so well in place of the broken cord, that Eunomos gained the victory, thanks to this unexpected assistant. Anacreon composed an ode in honour of the Cicada. " Happy Cicada, that on the highest branches of the trees, having drunk a little dew, singest like a queen! Thy realm is all thou seest in the fields, all which grows in the forests. Thou art. beloved by the labourer; no one harms thee; the mortals respect thee as the sweet harbinger of summer. Thou art cherished by the muses, cherished by Phcebus himself, who has given thee thy harmonious song. Old age does not oppress thee. O good little animal, sprang from the bosom of the earth, loving song, free from suffering, that hast neither blood nor flesh, what is there prevents

thee from being a god?'' It was in virtue of the false ideas of the Greeks on natural history in general, and on the Cicada in particular, that this little animal symbolised, among the Athenians, nobility of race. They imagined that the Cicada was formed at the expense of the earth, and in its bosom, on which account those who pretended to an ancient and high origin, wore in their hair a golden Cicada. The Locrians had on their coins the image of a Cicada. This is the origin which fable assigns to the custom:— The bank of the river upon which Locris was built was covered with screeching legions of Cicadas; whereas they were never heard (so says the legend) on the opposite bank, on which stood the town llhegium. In explanation of this circumstance, they pretend that Hercules, wishing one day to sleep on this bank, was so tormented by the "sweet eloquence" of the Cicadas, that, furious at their concert, he asked of the gods that they should never sing there for evermore, and his prayer was immediately granted! This is why the Locrians adopted the Cicada as the arms of their city.

The Greeks did not only delight, as poets and musicians, in the song of the Cicada; they were not content with addressing to it poems, with adoring it, and striking medals bearing its image; obedient to their grosser appetites, they ate it. They thus satisfied at the same time both the mind, the spirit, and the body.

The Cicadas are easily to be recognised by their heavy, very robust, and rather thick-set bodies, by their broad head, unprolonged, having very large and prominent oce//i, or simple eyes, three in number, arranged in a triangle on the top of the forehead, and short antennae. The immature anterior and posterior wings have the.

HEMIPTERA.

shape of a sheath, or case, enveloping the body when the insect is at rest; these are transparent and destitute of colour, or sometimes ■ adorned with bright and varied hues. The legs are not in the least suited for jumping. The female is provided with an auger, with which she makes holes in the bark of trees in which to lay her eggs. The male (Fig. 78) is provided with an organ, not of song, but of stridulation or screeching, which is very rudimentary in the female. We will stop a moment to consider the apparatus for producing the song, or . rather the noise, of the male Cicada, and the

structure of the female's auger. We are indebted to Re'aumur for the discovery of the mechanism by the aid of which the Cicada produces the sharp ' noise which announces its whereabouts from afar. We will give a summary of the celebrated Memoir in which the French naturalist has so admirably '. described the musical apparatus of the Cicada.*

It is not in the throat that the Cicada's organ of sound is placed, but on the abdomen. On ; examining the abdomen of the male of a large j species of Cicada, one remarks on it two horny jjplates, of pretty good size, which are not found *ion the females. Each plate has one side straight; (the rest of its outline is rounded. It is by the Fig. 78. -Cicada (Male), iside which is rectilinear that the plate is fixed liimmediately underneath the third pair of legs. It can be slightly [(raised, with an effort, by two spine-like processes, each of which ijpresses upon one of the plates, and when it is raised, prevents it from !|being raised too much, and causes it to fall back again immediately. I If the two plates are removed and turned over on the thorax, and [the parts which they hide laid bare, one is struck by the appearance which is presented. " One cannot doubt that all one sees has been made to enable the Cicada to sing," says Reaumur. " When one compares the parts which have been arranged so that it may be able to sing, as we may say, from its belly, with the organs of our throat, one finds that ours have not been made with more care than those

jiby means of which the Cicada gives forth sounds which are not }jalways agreeable." ' We here perceive a cavity in the anterior portion of the abdomen jand which is divided into two principal cells by a horny triangle.

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